I have spoken to him about it. He mills off the feed ramp from the mag box and a few other things. I would just do a single shot or a 338 RUM. I had Kirby Allen put a REM 700 mag box in my HOWA gave me enough room to use VLDs as a repeter.

On Lutz Moeller's website is a 338 Lapua magnum that Pete Roedale built on a Howa 1500, looks like it works with AICS magazines.

Anyone know what kind of nightmare is involved in this and the approximate amount of bolt face steel leftover?

There are many actions that can be made to except the .588 bolt face of the Lapua case.

Traditionally, the reason a person goes to the Lapua over the other 338s (.532 case heads)
is for the quality of the brass and the durability when fed large doses of hot loads.

I personally dont see anything wrong using one of these actions if someone wants to, but
I just dont like to remove any metal from an already small bolt (.700 thousandths) when there
are larger bolts/actions available.

If you look at removing bolt face metal from a .700 bolt you will end up with .056 or less on
each side of the .588 Lapua bolt face. That is not very much and offers very little room for
the extractor.

Also the larger bolt face places more stress on the lugs because of the increase of squair inches
of surface of the bolt.

I do not recomend or build any cartrige over .532 on the smaller actions with bolts .700 or smaller.

Again, It is done all the time and is an excepted practice but why do it when there are larger actions
available that don't have to be weakened to except the .588 or .600+case heads.

It is just a personal thing with me and respect for holding something that operates at or above
65,000 Psi.

There are several cases that will equal or exceed the Lapua that will fit a standard magnum bolt
face without alterations, but if its a Lapua that you want, go for it . (Just build it on a larger action
and you wont be sorry).

A good example of a factory action that works great is the Weatherby Mark 5 with the .583 boltface.
It only has to be opened up .005 thousandths, the extractor works with little or no fitting and the
magazine length is already longer by over .100 thousandths than the standard long actions.

The cost of the Mark 5 actions are more, but the savings in machining more that offset the
difference.

Also there are lots of custom actions that are designed for the larger cartriges.